Former New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) Vice-Chairman and Additional Secretary of Ministry of Agriculture, Jalaj Shrivastava has written to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, requesting him to delete the refernce pertaining to his alleged wrongdoings in settling the the dues of the le Meridien hotel, whose licence was cancelled by the NDMC on Thursday. The licence was cancelled for the non-payment of dues.
In a letter dated March ,3, 2017 Shrivastav, stated that he is being falsely implicated by the Council members and they have also “utterly misled and duped” the meeting. He said that the wording of the Council Note is incorrect.
Shrivastav said, “Intend to proceed for defamation and perjury against the officials responsible. If the council members do not delete the offensive paragraph, all of them will also be liable for wrong”.
He termed that the “Agenda Note for the Council is a tissue of lies” in his official conduct and urged Kejriwal to go through the previous notings and pass a resolution to delete “lies and distortions regarding his conduct”.
“A wide reading of the relevant file noting would also show the manner in which NDMC chairperson has attempted to gloss over facts and implicate me by concealing the files from the KK Pathak Enquiry Committee and the council members now. lastly I believe I have served faithfully and in the best interests of the NDMC for the tenure that I did, and for a substantial part of the same, you were the presiding officer for the council meetings. I do not recall your pointing out any flaw or irregularities in my workings and I do believe my team put up a record revenue growth,” the letter read.
“The least I expect you , Sir, as the Presiding Officer, is to go through the file notings thoroughly and delete from the Agenda Note through a separate resolution, all the lies and distortions regarding my conduct. You would further appreciate that legally for any action, the council members are individually and severally liable. Having served the interests of the Council, I have absolutely no intentions as of now to enter confrontational position against the very people in the council. I regard highly; the rest I leave to your kind judgment and sense of fair play,” Srivastava said in his letter to the Chief Minister.
The NDMC had on Thursday cancelled the license of the five-star hotel due to non payment of the license fee amounting to Rs 518 crore. le Meridien’s license fee has been a bone of contention with allegations of irregularities against the civic body in recovery of license fee from the 5-star property located in the city’s lutyens’ Zone.
Clarifying his stance on the amount taken for settlement, Shrivastav said that while serving as the chairman, he had written a two-page long letter stating that the court must be apprised that “the NDMC accepting the cheques from the hotel did under no circumstances constitute an agreement or compromise, but only an undisputed portion of the dues, which would be settled and decided by the Court in due course”.
He said that there was a “major communication gap when the High Court misunderstood this as settlement and decreed accordingly” following which he filed a rectificatory petition to correctly place the council’s stance.
Shrivastav also alleged that the KK Pathak Committee which was formed to address the complaint regarding le Meridian Hotel neither took his version, nor did the basic due diligence of looking at the NDMC file. In fact the report itself states that the civic body did not show them the subject files.